Think HIV is a death sentence? Well, think again!

Angela Winfield became HIV-positive in her teens but thanks to medical advances, is facing a normal lifespan, with medication to control the condition.

“EVERY day I wake up and I’m alive and it’s a new day, that’s all I ask for. I would love to go on and live as long as I can.”

It’s an ambition Angela Winfield thought she would never achieve after becoming HIV-positive in her teens.  At the time, she was told nothing could be done, and the longest she could expect to live was to just 30.

But as medical advances have continued since the once-deadly condition first became prevalent 30 years ago, she was told two years ago she could now have a normal lifespan.

Angela, 44, became HIV-positive after her first sexual encounter at the age of 15. Her then-boyfriend, who has since died, believed he contracted the condition from a transfusion of tainted blood that he needed because he was a haemophiliac.

Angela later went on to have two children with another man, but then, shockingly, found out at the age of 23 that she had HIV. She faced an agonising wait to see if her daughters had contracted the condition, but they were clear.

Since then, she met her husband, John Winfield, who shares her life as she keeps the condition in check with advanced drugs.

Angela, of Bradbourne Court, Derby, said of the day she was first diagnosed: “I was an absolute mess when I was told. It was horrific.

“I’d been handed a death sentence and there was no way out. I thought my life was over before it had started. I no longer had anything to live for, everything seemed pointless.”

After being diagnosed, Angela’s first thoughts were for the future of her two daughters, now aged 26 and 22. She said: “Finding out they didn’t have it was a huge relief and gave me the fight to go on.”

Angela once had to take 28 tablets a day because of her condition but now it is down to just three. She said: “A lot of my friends can’t believe how long I have lived and I want to keep going. Thinking you won’t live past the age of 30 is a terrible feeling.

“I was told two years ago that it’s no longer a death sentence. It’s now an illness which can be controlled.

“I want to keep going. I would love to be a great-grandma and after saying I didn’t think I would see my grandchildren, that is amazing.

Angela has seen the birth of five grandchildren and married John eight years ago. He cares for Angela, who also suffers from osteoarthritis, a spinal prolapse and side-effects from the medication.

Angela now has a clear message for youngsters who are experimenting with sex and for those who are diagnosed with HIV. She said: “Please be careful. Think about what you’re doing because one mistake can change your life. It only takes one time and then that’s it, your life will change forever.”

John is tested for the disease every few years. So far, results have always been negative and the 49-year-old does not fear them.

John, who works part-time at Silly Sid’s furniture store, in Balaclava Road, said: “Since I have been with Angela, I have gone with the flow. The disease has never bothered me at all. If any of my tests come back positive then that’s life.”

PROGNOSIS HAS IMPROVED WITH TIME:

WITHOUT treatment, the average survival time after infection with HIV is estimated to be nine to 11 years.

Infection with HIV occurs by the transfer of blood, bodily fluids, or breast milk. Within these, HIV is present both as free virus particles and a virus within infected immune cells.

Twenty years ago, anyone diagnosed with HIV could expect to suffer with AIDS within ten years and most patients were expected to die within two years of developing AIDS.

Fortunately, new tests, treatments, and technological advances for HIV have greatly improved this formerly grim prognosis. Anti-HIV drugs can help to slow damage caused by the virus.

Timely treatment is the key to a good prognosis for people who have HIV. Those who remain untreated will experience complications from the virus that will lead, over time, to illness and death, but anti-HIV therapy can help most people stay healthy and experience long lives.

STAY UPDATED

or subscribe by email

Visit Well For Living
for well-being news and info or 

Parents’ anguish at Alexander McQueen HIV ‘lie’ in new book

He was one of Britain’s most lauded fashion designers, a man regarded as a guru by many in the industry for the way his radical vision and masterful craftsmanship revolutionised the catwalk before his suicide at the age of 40.

Now, five years after Alexander McQueen’s death, the parents of his former long-term partner, who died shortly afterwards, have accused the publishers of a forthcoming biography of peddling a lie about their son and causing severe distress to their family.

The book, Alexander McQueen: Blood Beneath The Skin, by Andrew Wilson, claims that George Forsyth had contracted HIV before McQueen’s death and that the designer believed his ex-lover had passed it on to him.

The film maker, who became McQueen’s unofficial husband in 2000, before same-sex marriages were legalised, died at the age of 34 after taking a large amount of painkiller for a neurological condition he was suffering – a few months after the couturier hanged himself in his Mayfair flat.

His parents, Alan and Sandra, say the claim that he had HIV and infected McQueen is completely false and have accused publishers Simon & Schuster of refusing to remove it from the biography before its publication.

The book is understood to quote McQueen as telling a friend that Forsyth had infected him with the virus.  Mr and Mrs Forsyth asked Simon & Schuster to remove the HIV claim from the book before its publication on Thursday.

When they were told this would not be possible, they urged the publisher to at least insert an erratum slip in each copy of the book making it clear the claim was false. The publisher said it was unable to do so in time for the first edition but would make a correction for the second print run.

In an email to Mr and Mrs Forsyth, one of Simon & Schuster’s senior publicists apologised for the inaccuracy, stating: “May I say on behalf of Simon and Schuster that I’m very sorry for any distress which has been caused to you and your family.

“I can’t imagine how upsetting it is to read things about your son which are untrue and sensationalised and I am deeply sorry that this has happened. I have been in touch with the book’s editor who is looking into how we amend this when the book reprints.”

However, nine days later Simon & Schuster’s lawyers wrote to the Forsyths stating that the publicist’s apology was a “voluntary act of kindness” and did not give them any legal basis for a claim for damages against the publisher on behalf of their dead son.

They added: “As a gesture of goodwill Simon & Schuster will not include the words referring to George Forsyth detailed in your letter in reprints of the book or in eBook editions.”

Mrs Forsyth, 73, a retired architect, said: “We soon realised they couldn’t really pulp every copy, but the least they could do was amend the inaccuracies in an erratum slip inserted in each book on publication. But they refused, saying only that they would amend the book and remove the inaccuracies before its second print run.”

She added: “It is extremely upsetting to have these lies written about George, who was never HIV positive and therefore could never have passed it on to Lee [McQueen].

“He regularly tested himself and always came back HIV negative. Indeed a joint test he carried out with a new boyfriend, after his relationship with McQueen had collapsed, showed he was HIV negative.

“After Lee split with George he took many drugs and slept with lot of people, so if he was HIV positive he would have contracted it this way.”

^{George Forsyth (Albanpix)}

The book also makes the claim that Forsyth died of an overdose of the painkiller codeine. His parents deny this, saying that he had accidentally taken a large amount of the drug after it was prescribed to him as part of treatment for a neurological problem that left him in severe pain and unable to use his right arm.

“The coroner at George’s inquest ruled his death was accidental. He did not die of a drug overdose,” said Mrs Forsyth.

She added: “This book has come out five years after our son’s death, just at the point we have reconciled ourselves to him going, and it brings back up an awful lot of upsetting memories for us.”

Mr Forsyth, 70, an architect, said: “To knowingly print something that isn’t true is a terrible thing for a serious book publisher to do. I think it is terribly cynical behaviour.”

The parents became aware of the HIV claim after the publication of a newspaper article in January, based on the book. When the couple complained, the newspaper issued an apology, stating that the filmmaker was never HIV positive.

Alexander McQueen died nine days after his mother Joyce succumbed to cancer aged 75 – and the day before her funeral.

Another book published this month, Gods and Kings, by Dana Thomas – on the lives of McQueen and fellow designer John Galliano – has been criticised for describing his suicide in graphic detail.

^{Alexander McQueen with Naomi Campbell, left, Kate Moss and Annabelle Neilson (Rex)}

Mr and Mrs Forsyth believe the claims made in Andrew Wilson’s book are not only personally upsetting, but also betray the memory of their son’s relationship with McQueen.

Speaking after McQueen’s death in 2010, his ex-partner said of their first encounter in a London bar in 1999: “We just got on really well from the very beginning. He was an East End boy, I’m a North London Jew. We could talk for hours.”

Mrs Forsyth said: “They had a tempestuous relationship, yes, but a lot of the time it was very loving. Even when their marriage collapsed they remained friends. To read this kind of false claim about them is very upsetting.”

Story via Telegraph

STAY UPDATED

or subscribe by email

Visit Well For Living
for well-being news and info or 

HIV has been around for over 100 years!

In Randy Shilts’ history of AIDS, “And the Band Played On,” he tells the story of an Air Canada steward named Gaëtan Dugas, who suffered from what Dugas called “gay cancer” and infected 40 people or more with HIV.  He was, Shilts wrote, “Patient Zero.”

Dugas, through his extensive travels and unprotected sex, undoubtedly helped spread HIV. But was he the man who brought the disease to America?

In the new book, “The Chimp and the River: How AIDS Emerged from an African Rain Forest”, author David Quammen says no.

“Dugas himself was infected by some other human, presumably during a sexual encounter — and not in Africa . . . somewhere closer to home,” Quammen writes. “As evidence now shows, HIV had already arrived in North America when Gaëtan ­Dugas was a virginal adolescent.”

Using molecular genetics, researchers have now traced the ­exact strain of HIV that became a pandemic — HIV-1, Group M, Subtype B — to its original source.

Amazingly, through examination of genetic samples from humans and chimps, Quammen reveals scientists have found exactly when and where HIV started — even a probable theory as to how.

• 1908: Research reveals “AIDS [sic] began with a spillover from one chimp to one human, in or near a small southeastern wedge of Cameroon, around 1908,” Quammen writes. The most likely way it jumped species was through a person Quammen calls the “Cut Hunter” — a man who hunted and butchered a chimpanzee infected with simian immunodeficiency virus and was wounded in the process. The chimp’s blood mingled with his through the cuts in his skin.

• 1910s-20s: Chances are the Cut Hunter infected only one other person, and HIV likely spread on a one-to-one basis through sexual contact, working its way down the Sangha River in Cameroon to the Congo, eventually reaching the city of Leopoldville (later Kinshasa). Why did no one notice? Life expectancy in that time and place wasn’t that high. And the infected were likely to die of some other common disease, with no one suspecting that their immune systems were compromised.

• 1920s-50s: Colonial officials were conducting massive health campaigns in Africa to treat tropical diseases. Quammen notes that the treatment for one ailment, caused by tsetse flies, required 36 injections over three years. But hypodermic syringes were rare commodities, made out of glass and metal. They were used over and over again. “Once the reusable needles and syringes had put the virus into enough people — say, several hundred — it wouldn’t come to a dead end, it wouldn’t burn out, and sexual transmission could do the rest,” Quammen writes. Meanwhile, Kinshasa’s population exploded. Between 1940 and 1960, the city grew from 49,000 people to about 400,000.

• 1960: Belgium abruptly gives up the Congo as a colony as forces led by Mobutu Sese Seko overthrow the government. The Belgian regime, Quammen notes, had discouraged education among its colonial subjects; there were no Congolese doctors. Instead, those ranks were filled by French-speaking Haitians who fled home after the government fell. “Someone brought back to Haiti, along with Congolese memories, a dose of HIV-1, Group M, Subtype B,” Quammen writes.

• 1969: But how does one infected Haitian lead to an outbreak that, according to 1982 blood tests, results in 7.8 percent of women in a Port-au-Prince slum having HIV? Again, needles. In the early 1970s, a plasma-donation clinic, run by a Miami investor, opened in Haiti offering residents $3 per liter. Shared needles at this clinic likely increased the infection rates in Haiti and shipped the disease to the United States in frozen blood plasma. Research indicates that just a single migration of the virus — ­either one infected person or one container of plasma — accounted for bringing HIV to America. “That sorry advent had occurred in 1969, plus or minus about three years,” Quammen writes.

• 1980: The disease lurked in America for a decade before anyone noticed. “It reached hemophiliacs through the blood supply,” Quammen writes. “It reached drug addicts through shared needles. It reached gay men… by sexual transmission, possibly from an initial contact between two males, an American and a Haitian.” In 1980, Michael Gottlieb, an assistant professor at UCLA Medical Center, noticed a number of gay men suffering from pneumonia because of weakened immune systems. He wrote a short piece about it in 1981 for the Centers for Disease Control newsletter. A similar cluster is documented in New York. At the same time, a group of heterosexual Haitian immigrants in Miami are found to suffer from symptoms similar to Gottlieb’s patients.

Learn more about the story here.

STAY UPDATED

or subscribe by email

Visit Well For Living
for well-being news and info or 

Sex education: how it is taught here and abroad

MPs want sex education to be made compulsory in English state schools. What happens now – and how does this compare with other countries?

The Commons education select committee wants personal, social, health and economic education (PSHE) to be given statutory status.

Currently, sex education is not mandatory in council-run primary schools, apart from basic biology in science lessons, and only topics like sexually transmitted infections (STIs) have to be taught in secondaries that are under local authority control. Academies, free schools and independents are not bound by these rules.

Despite the lack of compulsion in sex and relationships education, it is taught in many state schools in England, and guidance has been drawn up for teachers.

All state-funded schools are expected to follow guidance published by the Department for Educationin 2000.

• This says children should be taught about the importance of marriage and stable relationships.
• Secondary school pupils should learn about human sexuality, the reasons for delaying sexual activity, the benefits from delaying, and sexual health.
• Early sexual experimentation is not encouraged.
• Pupils should learn about contraception, reproduction and emotions.
• They should also be taught about avoiding unplanned pregnancies.
• The guidance makes it clear that “inappropriate images” and “explicit material” should not be used.
• In primaries, pupils should learn about puberty before they reach this stage, and should be taught about how babies are born. In their final year, they should learn about periods and voice breaking.
• In secondaries, pupils are taught about relationships, love and and the responsibilities of parenthood. There is emphasis on contraception and safe sex, along with the arguments for delaying sex and resisting peer pressure. Students are also expected to understand how the law applies to sexual relationships.

Supplementary guidance for the digital age has been drawn up by the PSHE Association.

• This makes it clear that “pornography is not the best way to learn about sex because it does not reflect real life, and can therefore be worrying, confusing and frightening for young people”.
• On sexting, it says pupils “should learn that it is illegal to produce, possess or distribute an indecent image of a person under the age of 18 – even if it’s a picture of themselves”.

So what happens in other countries?

Finland

The Sex Education Forum (SEF), which is in favour of mandatory sex education in all English schools, points to Finland as an example of a country that has got things right (after making a mistake).

Sex education was made compulsory in schools in 1970, but became optional in 1994. As a result, according to the SEF, sex education declined and there was a rise in teenage abortions.

Complusion was re-introduced in primary and secondary schools 2006, and the evidence shows that girls are having sex later and using contraception, with a decline in the number of teenage abortions.

Holland

Another leader in the field is Holland, where sex education – and information about sexual diversity – are compulsory in all secondary and primary schools.
Holland has one of the lowest teenage pregnancy rates in the world.

Ireland

Sex education is mandatory, but, as in England, parents can remove their children from classes.

US

Although most children over 12 learn about sex, what they are taught varies from state to state.

Some teenagers are taught about “abstinence plus”, which encourages young people to refrain from sex, but also provides information on contraception and sexually-transmitted infections.

Others learn about “abstinence only”, which is centred on sex within marriage and does not mention contraception.

California is the only US state that has never accepted federal funding for abstinence-only programmes.

China

“According to state requirements, school-based sexuality education should be delivered within the context of health education in all secondary schools,” says a Unesco report.

Lessons are focused on “abstinence only” and sexual morality, but many specialists believe this approach is no longer appropriate.

Despite this, “attempts to introduce elements of education on safer sex to secondary schools have been strongly criticised”.

Jamaica

According to Unesco, from the age of 12, “information about sexual relationships becomes more explicit” in recognition of the fact that “at this age, many Jamaican young people are experimenting with sexual behaviour”.

But “some topics, such as respecting sexual diversity, remain contentious”.

via Channel4

STAY UPDATED

or subscribe by email

Visit Well For Living
for well-being news and info or 

New strain of HIV found in Cuba is twice as agressive as average virus

A new strain of HIV has been found in Cuba, which progresses to AIDS twice as fast as the average strain of the virus.

The strain, which is a mix of three subtypes of HIV, can progress to AIDS within 3 years without treatment- twice as fast as the 6 to 10 years that the average strain takes to progress.

According to The Seattle Times, Anne-Mieke Vandamme, a professor at the University of Leuven, and a team of researchers travelled to Cuba after an increasing number of HIV infections that rapidly spread to AIDS were reported.

The researchers studied 73 patients who had tested negative for HIV within three years, but who recently contracted the virus. All of the patients at the Tropical Medicine Pedro Kouri in Havana infected with the strain of HIV, known as recombinant, progressed to AIDS within three years and none of them received treatment before progressing.

More than 60 strains of HIV type 1 exist in the world because of mutations. The rapid nature of this new Cuban strain makes it difficult to treat.

Researchers also found that people having unprotected sex with multiple partners increased their risk of contracting multiple strains of HIV that could mutate or recombine into a new strain.

The research has been criticised, however, as the sample size of 95 patients is too small out of the some 15,000 Cubans living with HIV.

In the UK, HIV diagnoses have fallen from 6,333 in 2010 to 6,000 in 2013, and the proportion of late diagnoses of HIV continues to decline- down to 42% in 2013 from 50% in 2010.

via PinkNews

STAY UPDATED

or subscribe by email

Visit Well For Living
for well-being news and info or 

Women living with HIV: a matter of safety and respect

Last month the results of a global survey on women living with HIV were published. The survey was designed and conducted by women, and commissioned by the World Health Organisation. Will the findings be acted upon?

In 2014 the World Health Organisation commissioned the largest international survey to date on the sexual and reproductive health and human rights of women living with HIV. The survey was designed, led and conducted by women living with HIV.  Last month the global survey was published: Building A Safe House On Firm Ground.

I live in Canada in a small rural setting, and I have been living with HIV for many years. The survey calls for “safety, support and respect for all women at all times”.  It is my hope that readers examine the survey in its entirety.

A total of 832 women from 94 countries, aged 15-72, with another 113 women in focus groups from 7 countries took part in the survey. Violeta Ross (Bolivia) expressed how “This consultation means for me, the opportunity to learn from one and other. Women living with HIV are the best positioned for the design of sexual and reproductive health policies“.

The single most prominent finding of the survey was how women living with HIV experience high rates of violence, on a continuum throughout the life cycle: 89% of the respondents reported experiencing or fearing gender-based violence, before, during and/or after HIV diagnosis.

Violence was described as physical, psychological and/or financial, with an HIV diagnosis or disclosure acting as a trigger for violence at times. Over 80% of respondents reported experiences of depression, shame and feelings of rejection. Over 75% reported insomnia and difficulty sleeping, self-blame, very low self-esteem, loneliness, body image issues, or anxiety, fear and panic attacks, whether before, or as a direct result of, or after diagnosis.

Poverty ties in with violence, along with gender inequality. Many women with HIV come from diverse backgrounds, such as drug use, sex work, being lesbian or transgender. Women are often in relationships where they do not have the financial means to leave and are reliant on their partners, placing them in an unequal power dynamic and open to further abuse and blackmail.

The survey reveals the way in which the lack of human rights-based approaches to women’s services contributes to mental health issues, lack of satisfying sex lives, and lack of sexual and reproductive rights. All women with HIV have the right to achieving their sexual and reproductive rights as a fundamental part of being human. The survey also highlights the importance of women needing to achieve their own rights in all these areas in order for them adequately to support their children and partners – which women with HIV are very much wanting to do.

The report strongly recommends the meaningful involvement of women living with HIV as active participants in all plans and research which affects them.

As Sophie Strachan of the UNAIDS Dialogue Platform and the Global Coalition of Women and AIDS explained, “The main importance of this consultation is that WHO hear and take up our recommendations, listen to our voices (as experts) to hear the needs of women living with HIV and include peer led support/services in their guidelines. We need gender specific policies to ensure the rights of women in all our diversities are met.”

Gender-based violence against women living with HIV is a world-wide phenomenon. In a Canadian context it takes place on a continuum from polite rejections, discrimination and regular experiences of being stigmatized, to more overt forms of violence including physical assault, threats of violence during disclosure of their HIV status or with partners who use the secret of “shame” of their HIV status to control women and keep them from leaving a relationship.

Women living with HIV in Canada often have children and cannot find adequate child care. So they cannot spend time furthering their education and are therefore trapped in a poverty cycle which is often impossible to break. This further exacerbates the potential for abuse and violence.

Indigenous women in Canada represent a small percentage of the overall population, but are over-represented in the number of women living with HIV in Canada, as are women of colour who have emigrated from other regions of theworld. Women living with HIV in Canada often live in isolation, keeping their HIV status private for fear of backlash from the community and to protect their children from stigma and discrimination.  Living in isolation leads to decisions to not seek treatment, not seek care and support to deal with stress and anxiety, and not take prescribed medication on a regular basis, if at all.

It may come as a surprise to learn that Canada has one of the highest rates of criminalization of HIV for non-disclosure in the world. This needs to be addressed to alleviate fear and silence about HIV. Canada demands that other countries adhere to basic human rights practices, yet at home we do not. Fortunately we have a strong organization, the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, which lobbies for de-criminalization of HIV and changes in our government’s position on this topic. Criminalization of HIV in fact serves to increase HIV transmission. With the onus on the HIV positive person to disclose their status to sex partners or risk prosecution, individuals assume and expect that everyone living with HIV will disclose, and they rely on this and do not ask questions, do not insist on the use of condoms or any safe sex practices. This causes a false sense of security for people on the dating scene, and indirectly creates a situation where people living with HIV are used as part of screening mechanisms for safe sex practices, with the rationale that a person can rely on prosecution if and when a person does not disclose their status. It places the burden of disclosure on the person living with HIV, and does not emphasize the need for each individual to take responsibility for their own sexual health and well being. Laws will not protect people from contracting HIV, personal responsibity for oneself will.

Two recent court rulings in 2013 and 2014 against women in Canada for non-disclosure of their HIV status highlight how the law lags far behind science in relation to the virtual impossibility of transmitting HIV if one has an undetectable viral load. There is a critical need to decriminalize HIV; there is also a need for everyone to take responsibility for their own sexual health.

Services to support women living with HIV in Canada exist in a splintered fashion and vary from province to province.  In Quebec I have had many conversations with women living with HIV, but there seems to be no clear or definitive answers about why women are so reluctant to engage in services. Service providers do not have the solutions around engaging women in services either. From my own point of view I would like to see more concrete and  practical services which will enable us to learn new job skills to integrate back into the work place.

A human rights focus is needed as much in Canada as it is in the so-called “developing” world. The many components on the continuum of violence towards women living with HIV need to be addressed, including financial inequality, need for adequate housing, job security and human rights-based approaches to employment and care.

There is an obvious need for a national cohesive voice for women living with HIV in Canada. What needs to take place here in Canada, as everywhere, is a serious attempt to practice the meaningful involvement of women living with HIV in the full cycle of all aspects of planning, programme implementation and evaluation. We are the experts, and we alone can identify what our needs are and how they can be addressed. This was clearly demonstrated in the Salamander Trust survey, which has produced the most meaningful and authentic results I have read to date.

World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines now need to be updated to reflect both the findings of the report, and to reflect recent political and biomedical aspects of the HIV response.

via OpenDemocracy

STAY UPDATED

or subscribe by email

Visit Well For Living
for well-being news and info or 

HIV vaccine that transforms cell DNA brings fresh hope

A radical new approach to vaccination seems to completely protect monkeys from HIV, US scientists report.

Vaccines normally train the immune system to fight an infection.

Instead, researchers at the Scripps Research Institute in California have altered the DNA of monkeys to give their cells HIV-fighting properties.

The team describe it as “a big deal” and want to start human trials soon. Independent experts say the idea is worth “strong consideration”.

This technique uses gene therapy to introduce a new section of DNA inside healthy muscle cells.

That strip of DNA contains the instructions for manufacturing the tools to neutralise HIV, which are then constantly pumped out into the bloodstream.

Experiments, reported in the journal Nature, showed the monkeys were protected from all types of HIV for at least 34 weeks.

As there was also protection against very high doses, equivalent to the amount of new virus that would be produced in a chronically infected patient, the researchers believe the approach may be useful in people who already have HIV.

Lead researcher Prof Michael Farzan told the BBC: “We are closer than any other approach to universal protection, but we still have hurdles, primarily with safety for giving it to many, many people.

Shifting target

“We’re very proud of it and we think it’s a big deal, but we are biased.”

HIV vaccines have struggled because the virus mutates so rapidly it is a constantly shifting target.

This one targets areas that HIV struggles to change.

“The real strength of this thing is that it is more potent than any antibody,” Prof Farzan said.

However, there are safety questions.

After conventional vaccination, the immune system responds only after it is presented with a threat.

The gene therapy approach turns cells into factories that constantly spew out the artificial HIV-killers, and the long-term implications of that are unknown.

‘Important step’

The team want to begin trials in patients who have HIV but are unable to take conventional drug therapies within the next year.

Prof Nancy Haigwood, of Oregon Health & Science University, commented: “In the absence of a vaccine that can elicit broadly protective immunity and prevent infection, and given the lack of major breakthroughs on the horizon to provide one, the idea of conferring potent, sustained vaccine-like protection against HIV infection through gene therapy is certainly worth strong consideration.”

Dr Anthony Fauci, of the US National Institutes of Health, said: “It would be advantageous to curb HIV infection without daily antiretroviral drugs because of their cost, the potential for negative side-effects from lifelong therapy, and the difficulties some patients have adhering to daily drug regimens and tolerating certain drugs.

“This innovative research marks an important step toward our goal of putting HIV into sustained remission in chronically infected people.”

via BBC

STAY UPDATED

or subscribe by email

Visit Well For Living
for well-being news and info or 

What Leicestershire parents think about compulsory sex education lessons in primary schools

Sex education: too much emphasis on the mechanics, says Doortje Braeken, who argues for more teaching about sexuality. Photograph: David Levene (The Guardian)

Parents in Leicestershire have given the thumbs down to an MPs report which said sex and relationships education lessons should be compulsory in primary schools.

They gave their reactions after the Commons Education Committee said that “age appropriate” personal, social, health and economic education (PSHE) and sex and relationships education (SRE) should be taught.

But mums in Leicestershire have told the Mercury they thought primary school was too early for youngsters to be taught sex education.

At the moment primary schools do not have to provide sex and relationships education beyond basic biology.

Faiza Ismel, 32, a teacher from Highfields, said: “It’s often difficult and embarrassing for both the teacher and the children.

“Children should be taught about it at home first and then taught about it in secondary school.”

Nicky Gant a 28-year-old support worker from Syston, added: “Let kids be kids. We shouldn’t push it on them.

“They should keep their innocence.”

However, there was a different response to the report from a leading city teaching union official .

Peter Flack, assistant association secretary for the city of Leicester National Union of Teachers, said the principal of SRE being compulsory in primary schools was welcomed.

He said: “One of the problems is that this is portrayed as sex education.

“The emphasis on constructive, positive and sharing relationships is a good thing.

“This is about empathy and commitment and stressing strong and loyal relationships based on trust.

“The NUT very much welcomes anything which contributes to positive relationships.”

The city and county councils have both said their schools already provide a lot of support to youngsters regarding these subjects.

A spokesman for Leicestershire County Council said: “We welcome the report as sex and relationships education taught to a good quality can make a positive contribution towards developing the knowledge, understanding and values of young people.

“We already have a lot of support in place within Leicestershire through the healthy schools programme and Teenage Pregnancy Partnership.

“If the recommendations of the report are accepted by the Government, we’ll continue to support teachers and school leaders and give them the confidence to lead more detailed conversations with parents about the subject.”

A Leicester City Council spokesman said: “We are proud of our SRE policy which places the right emphasis on being safe and happy in a relationship as well as looking at staying safe on the internet or other media.

“We have a strong history in the city’s schools of high quality teaching in this area and this has also contributed to the significant reduction in teenage pregnancies.”

The Commons Education Committee launched its inquiry after inquiry was launched after Ofsted found more than a third of schools nationally were not providing age-appropriate SRE.

Commons Education Committee chairman Graham Stuart said: “Young people have a right to information that will keep them safe.”

Mr Stuart said: “SRE forms an important part of any school’s efforts to safeguard young people from abuse and is particularly needed to protect the most vulnerable children.

“PSHE builds character and resilience and will help young people to live happy and healthy lives.”

Nationally, the report has been welcome by the Office of the Children’s Commissioner of England.

Deputy Commissioner Sue Berelowitz said: “Once again we are calling for age-appropriate relationships and sex education to be made a statutory component of the curriculum.

“Young people need to understand what are and what are not healthy relationships.

Although the report was welcomed by the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT), it said that key questions still need to be answered.

Chris Keates, from the NASUWT, said: “We recognise the Select Committee is trying to address a difficult and contentious issue.

“However, there remain some key questions to be addressed.

“Who will determine what is age appropriate PSHE and SRE and what precisely should be taught?

“Will academies and free schools be required to implement such provision, given that they have freedom to determine their own curriculum?”

The union has also questioned who will provide the specialist support and training to provide the lessons.

She added: “Policymakers need to decide whether SRE is statutory and is treated as such in all schools, in which case parental opt-out cannot be retained.”

via Leicester Mercury

Further reading

British Schools Desperately Need Same-Sex Education

STAY UPDATED

or subscribe by email

Visit Well For Living
for well-being news and info or 

Organ transplants between HIV-positive patients show promise

People with HIV are living longer than ever, thanks to antiviral drugs. While that’s great news for those who live with HIV, it also means that we’re starting to face the medical complications that crop up with old age — like organ failure! Researchers have been experimenting with transplants between HIV-positive donors and HIV-positive recipients, and a new study shows that these can be done with increasingly promising results.

EARLY RESULTS LED TO THE US LIFTING A RESEARCH BAN

When doctors from Groote Schuur Hospital in South Africa first reported on their work transplanting kidneys between HIV-positive patients back in 2010, the results were so positive that it led the United States to lift a research ban on the practice. It’s now five years later, and that same hospital is publishing the results of how its original patients are doing in The New England Journal of Medicine. The report includes more than 20 additional patients, after an average of about three years following the transplant.

The hospital found that the survival rate following a transplant between HIV-positive patients is only modestly lower than the survival rates for a transplant in someone who is HIV-negative. For HIV-positive patients, there was an 84 percent survival rate one year after surgery and a 74 percent rate at five years. That’s compared to rates of 91 percent and 85 percent for HIV-negative patients in the same hospital unit. Though the trial focused entirely on kidney transplants, the doctors behind it believe that these results show the procedure has potential for broader use.

“Using HIV-positive donors might resolve some of the problems we are experiencing in getting enough donors for our patients with [chronic kidney disease] worldwide,” Elmi Muller, the study’s lead author, writes in an email to The Verge.

“THE QUESTION IS, ‘WHAT IS THE RISK OF GETTING THE TRANSPLANTS COMPARED TO THE RISK OF NOT DOING THE TRANSPLANT?'”

One early worry was that a more treatment-resistant form of HIV could transfer from a donor to a recipient; fortunately, the doctors saw no sign of increased viral levels after the transplant. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t some risk to the patients, though. Five patients died within a year after the transplant from various causes, including cancer and heart problems. And transplant rejection was also a problem: of the 24 patients who survived the transplant, five patients had rejections, with eight rejections occurring in total. Prior research has found that organ rejection is more common in HIV-positive recipients — so this may not be a complication specific to receiving an organ from an HIV-positive donor.

Even with the added risk, doctors still see reasons to pursue HIV-positive transplants. “The question is not, ‘What is the additional risk of doing the transplant?'” Dorry Segev, a transplant surgeon with Johns Hopkins Medicine, says.  “The question is, ‘What is the risk of getting the transplants compared to the risk of not doing the transplant?’ And in not doing the transplant, HIV patients have a much higher risk of dying on dialysis. Much higher than their HIV-negative counterparts.”

That’s particularly pertinent in South Africa, where HIV is more prevalent and more donors are needed. “Because of very high HIV rates in South Africa, more and more HIV-positive, brain-dead donors [are] presented to the Groote Schuur Hospital transplant team,” Muller writes. “In South Africa it made sense to try and marry this supply of donors with the group of HIV-positive patients without any treatment options in the country.” Only deceased donors were used in Muller’s study.

MULLER EXPECTS TO WORK WITH OTHER ORGANS IN “THE NEXT FEW YEARS.”

This is also about more than kidneys. Muller chose to begin with kidney transplants because, she says, kidney problems are “very prevalent in HIV-positive patients,” while other issues, like liver and heart failure, occur at rates similar to the general population. But it’s likely that the practice will eventually expand to other organs. “Liver transplants are more complicated and logistically more difficult,” Muller writes. “But I do think we will expand it over the next few years.

Segev hopes to see transplants between HIV-positive patients start soon in the US. In fact, following the release of Muller’s initial study, he worked with Congress to pass the HOPE (HIV Organ Policy Equity) Act in 2013, which could eventually lead to the use of organs from HIV-positive donors. At the time, President Obama expressed support for continued research. “The potential for successful organ transplants between people living with HIV has become more of a possibility,” the president said. Segev’s research has estimated that thousands of lives could be saved each year by accepting HIV-positive donors.

Though the HOPE Act has been passed, Segev says that the Health Department still needs to create the guidelines under which these trials can be run. He expects to see transplants start in the US in about a year. If it goes well, he says they could be widespread within about three years.

“THE OUTCOMES ARE ACTUALLY REALLY ENCOURAGING.”

It’s possible that some complications will come up bringing the procedure from South Africa to the United States. Because patients in South Africa may have less access to antiretroviral medication, there’s less resistance there and drugs are likely to be more effective. Still, Segev says that medications have come far enough that it shouldn’t significantly complicate US transplants. “It’s highly unlikely even in the US they will receive an [antiretroviral therapy] resistance that is untreatable,” he says.

“The biggest takeaways are that the outcomes are actually really encouraging,” Segev says. “…This really is another reminder that we need to move forward in the United States with doing this.”

via The Verge

 

STAY UPDATED

or subscribe by email

Visit Well For Living
for well-being news and info or 

A third of over-70s report ‘frequent sexual activity’

“A third of pensioners have sex at least twice a month,” the Daily Mail reports. A new UK study reinforces the point that sex doesn’t automatically stop once a person gets their free bus pass.

The study looked at sexual activity and sexual health among more than 6,000 men and women aged 50 to 90. It showed that a sizeable minority of older people – including those over the age of 80 – continue to have active sex lives, although sex became less frequent as people got older.

Men were particularly concerned about their sexual health as they got older, while women became less so. Men were worried about erection problems and women about lack of desire.

This is an interesting study of sexuality among older people. It relies on self-reporting, which might undermine its reliability, as some people may find it hard to be honest about such a sensitive topic.

A final important point is that sexually transmitted infection (STIs) don’t stop being a problem once you have retired. Recent data has shown that rates of common STIs in the 65 and over category have risen in England during the past decade. You should always practise safe sex whatever your age.

Where did the story come from?

The study was carried out by researchers from the University of Manchester, University of Leeds and NatCen Social Research. It was funded by the National Institute on Aging and a consortium of UK government departments.

The study was published in thepeer-reviewed journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.

The Daily Mail’s report that one third of pensioners have sex at least twice a month was accurate, but the results of this study were more complex than the Mail’s report implied as it was not all good news.

Many participants expressed concerns about sex, not just the frequency of their sexual activity. Also, the study did not cover only “pensioners” but people aged 50 and over.

What kind of research was this?

This was an observational study of sexual activity, problems with sexual functioning and concerns about sexual health among 6,201 older adults in England. The authors point out that stereotypes of older people often ignore the significance of sexual activity. Specifically how sexual activity, or lack of it, can affect fulfilment in relation to quality of life and emotional wellbeing. Also little is known about how sexuality relates to the ageing process generally.

What did the research involve?

The researchers used data from a nationally representative survey of men and women in England aged 50 years and older, who were taking part in an ongoing longitudinal study of ageing (the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing). All participants were living in the community, in private households, so the study did not cover older people in residential care.

In 2012/13, 7,079 participants had a face-to-face interview and completed a comprehensive questionnaire on their sexual relationships and activities. Partners under 50 were excluded and 6,201 participants, 56% of them women, were included in the final sample.

The questionnaire included detailed questions on attitudes to sex, frequency of sexual activities, problems with sexual activities and function, concerns and worries about sex, and details about current sexual partnerships.

Participants were also asked about their current living arrangements and general health and lifestyle factors during the face-to-face interview. They were asked if they had ever been diagnosed with any of several common conditions, including high blood pressure, arthritis,cardiovascular disease, diabetes and asthma.

They were also asked to rate their:

• health on a five point scale (ranging from excellent to poor),
• smoking status (current or non-smoker)
• frequency of alcohol consumption over the past year (ranging from never or rarely, to frequently – three days a week to almost every day)

Depressive symptoms were also assessed using a validated depression scale.

The researchers analysed their results, looking specifically at any association between sexual activity, reported chronic conditions and self-rated general health. They adjusted results for age, partner status, smoking status and frequency of alcohol consumption.

What were the basic results?

Below are the main findings of the study:

• At all ages, men reported more frequent sexual activity and thinking about sex more often than women. Likewise, sexually active men reported higher levels of concern with their sexual health and sexual dissatisfaction than women at all ages.
• Levels of sexual activity declined with increasing age, although a sizable minority of men and women remain sexually active until the eighth and ninth decades of life.
• Poorer health was associated with lower levels of sexual activity and a higher prevalence of problems with sexual functioning, particularly among men.
• The difficulties most frequently reported by sexually active women related to becoming sexually aroused (32%) and achieving orgasm (27%), while for men the main difficulty was erectile function (39%).
• The sexual health concerns most commonly reported by women related to their level of sexual desire (11%) and frequency of sexual activities (8%). Among men common concerns were level of sexual desire (15%) and erectile difficulties (14%).
• While the likelihood of reporting sexual health concerns tended to decrease with age in women, the opposite was seen in men.
• Poor sexual functioning and disagreements with a partner about initiating and/or feeling obligated to have sex were associated with greater concerns about and dissatisfaction with overall sex life.

How did the researchers interpret the results?

The researchers say that their study shows many older people, including those over 80, continue to have active sex lives, although the frequency of sexual activities declines with increasing age.

Women appeared less dissatisfied with their overall sex life than men and reported decreasing levels of dissatisfaction with increasing age.

They say that older people’s sexual health should be “managed” not just in the context of their age, gender and general health, but also within their existing sexual relationship.

Conclusion

This study suggests not only that many older people are still sexually active, but that, like every other age group, they have worries and concerns about sex and relationships. Not surprisingly, ageing and failing health affect sexual activity.

Older men report worrying about getting erections, while women are more concerned with lack of desire. The study also reminds us that sexual problems have to be seen in the context of a relationship.

The study is, by definition, based on people self reporting on sex, which might undermine its reliability. It is possible that some people find it hard to be honest about such a sensitive area, even in a confidential questionnaire.

If you are an older adult and you are having problems with your sex life then there may be treatment options available. Read more about how you could have a fulfilling sex life as you get older.

STAY UPDATED

or subscribe by email

Visit Well For Living
for well-being news and info or